LiveTiles: Time to Say Goodbye
The End of an Era at Australia’s Fastest Growing Tech Company
Last week was the worst in my career.
In the wake of restructuring at LiveTiles, the US products team is being let go. Yet more jobs lost in the wake of the global pandemic — one of at least 30 million so far in the US.
While it’s happening through no fault of our own, not even the fault of LiveTiles, it’s been a devastating loss. I’ve never been laid off before and it pains me to see talented folks go through economic uncertainty.
How Did We Get Here?
At the start of 2020, LiveTiles was enjoying a meteoric growth trajectory. We had passed 1,000 customers, had money in the bank, and the product team was preparing a unified vision of what lay ahead for our teams. COVID-19 was in the news, but only as a vague specter compelling us to wash our hands.
By March, our immense growth was recognized by the Australian Financial Review (like the Wall Street Journal) when we were named the fifth fastest-growing company in Australia — #1 for tech companies. We were pulling in $55 million AUD a year and shooting to reach breakeven and $100 million revenue in short order. Ten days earlier, the WHO has declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
When the global pandemic downturn hit the Australian market, it had two compounding effects. First, the ASX 200 fell catastrophically, signaling a large market downturn and frozen investor appetite for investment. Second, the Australian dollar (especially relative to the US dollar) fell in value, increasing costs for doing international business.
On the day the Australian Financial Review published its article on LiveTiles, the Aussie dollar had hits its lowest level since 2003.
The Cut
Acknowledging external conditions beyond their control, LiveTiles responded with cost-savings measures. Despite year-over-year growth in revenue, we were still in a cash-burn strategy for growth. With uncertainty with current and potential customers rising, first came a 20% reduction in hours across the workforce. Soon after came a 50 person layoff, including myself and my team.
From the numbers, I can see what leadership was up against. We had 5 years of agreeable markets, open-minded customers, and the ability to partner across a global ecosystem where the pie was always growing. Now we — the whole world — find ourselves in a cataclysm. The unfortunate consequence, is that not all of us will be caught by the safety nets we had before the crisis.
Most important to me, is trying to catch the people who trusted me to guide them during the good times. And now I have only limited ability to help in these bad times.
Team America
As I’ve written before: it’s no small miracle LiveTiles even had a US products team. Starting in Australia and operating in America out of New York City, LiveTiles had no west coast presence when I joined. Thankfully, the gravity of Microsoft and affordable costs of eastern Washington were able to attract the interested of one wily Australian — Phil Randall — and five years later we had ten folks across Washington building tools for 8.5 million global users.
This was the first team I was able to recruit, inspire, and unleash upon the world. Every single one of them possessed immense curiosity, creativity, and grit. It enabled them to learn their way out of problems, take on the user perspective when building solutions, and the ability to fail forward instead of fall into despair.
We grew a suite of products from zero to 900,000 monthly active users (MAU), scaling to an audience in almost every country in the world, and evolved a creative process that made us all creators. It was the best team in my career.
The Unicorn and The Rhino
Like all hyper-growth startups, LiveTiles spent years defining itself as the next prospective “unicorn”. That is, a startup company able to grow to a valuation of one billion dollars. While I understand the need to pursue growth, I believe the company as a whole — especially the product team — should aspire to be a different animal altogether.
For most companies, achieving unicorn status means sustaining a seemingly unstoppable growth trajectory such that there is at least a 20x multiple of revenue to value. This would mean achieving $50 million in revenue would make a billion-dollar company. In 2018, Canva — another Australian tech startup with a drag & drop digital product — achieved this feat exactly as described almost on the exact day LiveTiles was enjoying our conference in Hawaii.
The problem with being a unicorn is that you’re pushed to think in magical terms. It’s all glitter, no grit. There is an animal that has a horn and is unstoppable, but it’s real — and really tough. What is this creature?
A Rhino.
Since the early days of the US products team at LiveTiles, I’ve driven them to think about our products — and their effect upon the world — as being more like an odd-toed ungulate than a classical startup. Especially in the world of enterprise software, security and scalability (rhino qualities) override the glitz-and-glam of consumer software.
While searching for my next job, I need the fortitude to put myself out there. When facing an interview, I need the strength to look past any potential failure in losing my job and see the opportunity to get my next role. When supporting my family and friends, I need to be fierce. I need to be unstoppable. I need to be a rhino.
Conclusion
For anyone facing a hard time now, and there’s more and more every day, I hope you look inside yourself and see you’re more than a victim of your circumstance.
The world is being rocked, day-by-day, by forces beyond our control. We need to focus on what we can control. Staying calm despite the calamity. Staying strong despite our frailty. Be forgiving despite our experiences.
I believe every individual and organization is being transformed right now. It may be from stuck in the past to ready for the future. It may be from a hero to a villain. I know for some of them it will be from unicorn to rhino.
Erik Ralston is an innovator with 13 years of experience, 5 years in leadership at the fastest growing tech company in Australia, a BS in Computer Science from Washington State University, and an open calendar for talking about the next step in his career. Erik is also co-founder of Fuse Accelerator in Tri-Cities, WA where he works on connecting people and sharing knowledge to turn new ideas into growing startups. You can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or the next Fuse event — whenever we’re allowed to have those again.
